How-to: Find Joomla-template Module positions

If you’re working with Joomla modules, it might not always be simple to place a module in the proper module position.  Let’s be honest, unless you’ve got a print of the module positions next to you, it’s hard to know where all these module positions are located at.  Luckily, Joomla offers a simple solution.

To see where the module positions of a template are located, do the following:

1.  Open your browser.

2.  Browse to the following address:  http:// <url of your website goes here> /index.php?tp=1. 

This will reveal the module positions for the temlpates you’re currently using.  Enjoy!

How-to: Copy a Joomla module

Be warned: In this tutorial we’re going to be editing your joomla database.  So make backup when we tell you to – and preferably also when we don’t tell you to.  Following this guide is, as always, on your personal risk.  Some knowledge of how to use phpmyadmin is a necessity to follow this guide. 

 

If, for some reason, you ever feel the need to “copy” a module from one joomla site to the other, this guide will explain you how to get it done.  As for most of these guides, these were written because of our personal experiences.  In this case, I was adding some modules to our Dutch gaming site Toretto.be   while checking something at the site of my company.  By accident, I deleted a module, and I had to find out how to retrieve that – rather important – module.  If you’re in that same spot, or for some other reason need to copy a module, here’s how it’s done.

The copying part

1.  At the “original site”, find the “modules” folder.  (note: in our articles, when we tell you to go to this or that folder, we assume that you know that you might have to FTP to that folder.)

2.  Find the folder of the module you need to copy, and download it / copy it. 

3.  Using phpmyadmin, go to your joomla database.  Navigate to your jos_modules table and export the data. (note: if, for some reason, you didn’t accept the default database install of joomla, find the whateverthehellyouusedasapreset_modules instead).

4.  Paste the export in notepad, and find the line about your module.  Copy EVERYTHING until the next line starts.  These lines start with (some number, some info, some info…)

 

The pasting part

5.  Upload / copy the folder you just copied / downloaded to the “modules” folder of the target site. 

6.  Go to phpmyadmin for that site, and go to the Joomla Database. 

7.  Find the jos_modules table.  Create a “back-up” of this site, by going to “actions”.  Rename the table there.  (Note: this will, of course, make all your module data temporarily unavailable.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you)
8.  Yet again, make an export of this table; paste in notepad.  I’m sure there’s other ways to do it, but I couldn’t add the single line with SQL commands due to some errors.

9.  Paste the line you copied in step 4.  Pay attention to the ”ID" of the line; you might have to change it to something not already used by a module. 

10.  Copy everything, and go to phpmyadmin again.  Import the data using the SQL method. 

Congratulations, you’ve just copied your Joomla module! 

How-to: Set rights for /var/www when using Apache under Ubuntu

If you’re new to Joomla or are a casual user, and you’re trying to set up a LAMP server, you could run into some problems.  One problem that often bugged / bugs me, was settings the file permissions in the /var/www folders just right.  I either gave everyone full rights or created some freak kind of setup where everyone could FTP to the server, visit all pages and could download / upload files, but where the administrator couldn’t copy a single file when on the server.  But that’s not the point of this post.  This post is going to teach you how to set your File Rights in a proper, working way under Ubuntu.

Creating Groups

First of all, we’ll need to create a group which will have sufficient rights.

1.  Using the Ubuntu GUI:  Go to System > Users and Groups.  Click Unlock, and then choose “Manage groups”.   Click “Add Group”, then select “settings” for that group.  There, select all users that should be a member of that group, like Root, Administrator (or whatever your default user is), and other users (e.g I use a user, “ftp-user”, which is used for the FTP server).

Using the Terminal (a.k.a “The fast way”), enter the following commands:

sudo addgroup (your group name)

sudo adduser (user) (group) –> Repeat this command if neccessary.

 

Setting the user rights

2.  Now, we’re going to set the user rights.  I’m not 100% sure that my way is the BEST way, but it worked for me.  You’re going to have to use the terminal here, and use the following commands:

sudo adduser www-data (yourgroup)

sudo chgrp (your group) /var/www

sudo chmod –R 775 /var/www

sudo chmod g+s /var/www

 

If you’ve followed these steps, you should be able to do it all: visit your websites, upload and download (In my case, using Joomla to install modules etc.) and perform actions in the GUI (copying, deleting etc. etc.)

Enjoy your now usable files!

How to: Make Joomla SEO links work

Have you ever paid attention to what a Joomla standard link looks like?  They’re very long, complicated and not very user friendly.  To make things worse: They’re not very search engine-friendly either.  And we ALL know that Google is a websites’ best friend. 

Luckily for us, Joomla offers the option to easily user SEO URL’s (which stands for Search Engine Optimization or “Google Will Love You”).  Here’s the breakdown on how to do it.

How to do it

1.  Log in to the administrator panel of your website.

2.  Under “Website”, find the “SEO Settings”. 

• For Linux-based hosting:  Select the first two options, but mate sure that the mod_rewrite module is on.  If you’re not sure, contact the technical person at your hosting company. 
• For Windows-based hosting:  Set the first option to “Yes”. 

3.  If you’re using Linux-based hosting, find the file “htaccess.txt” in the root-directory of your website.  Rename it to .htaccess.  Don’t worry if it seems to magically dissapear.  Your file is now “invisible” but will be interpreted correctly by the browsers of your visitors. 

I did all that and it still doesn’t work! 

You obviously did it wrong, then.  Just kidding, there’s one more option you can set. 

4.  Open your configuration.php file (after downloading it first) and find var $live_site= ‘’.  Change this to match my example:  var $live_site= “http://domainofyoursite/path/to/joomla’.

Enjoy your Google-Friendly URL’s!   

How to: cancel print jobs in your queue

Ever experienced it when there are print jobs that are stuck in your queue?  Here’s how to fix it. 

1.  Open your “Services” Window

• For Windows XP: Start > Run> services.msc
• For Windows Vista:  in the search bar at the start menu, type “services.msc”

2.  find “print spooler” and restart this service.

3.  Go to your printer queue and cancel the print jobs.  Most likely you’ll now be able to delete them.